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unfair advantages of state sponsorship. Although the political and academic
debate in the past two decades in Western Europe and the United States has
been about the impact of privatization under neoliberal doctrine, in China,
the split between public and private entities is largely irrelevant. Simply put,
the distinction between private and public in China is not the same as it is in
the West. And these national development and land-use strategies and poli-
cies have favored controversial actions. For example, much industrial devel-
opment in China takes place on lands that were formerly rural, and forced
land conversions remain highly contentious. 36
After the 2007 announcement of shengtai wenming, these public-pri-
vate entities began major capital investments in environmental industries,
including green building and the environmental protection industry. 37 One
of the public-private entities is the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corpora-
tion (SIIC), the client for Dongtan eco-city, which I discuss in the next chap-
ter. Since the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century, China's environmental
protection industry has grown at an average annual rate of 17 percent, far
outstripping the rest of the economy. 38
Growing awareness that international concern about Chinese pollution
was signifi cant and that the unchecked pollution highlighted by the New
York Times series “Choking on Growth” was no longer palatable made inter-
national and national concerns synergistic. What that means in practice is
complicated, but the main point is that around 2007-2008, major environ-
mental changes were afoot at the national CCP and government levels. For
example, China issued “China's National Climate Change Program,” the fi rst
policy document about climate change in China. h is document clarifi ed
China's goals and principles in dealing with climate change. 39 In 2008, the
Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection was established to centralize
the duties of environmental protection and strengthen its law enforcement
power, in part because of a growing recognition at the national level of the
importance of environmental protection to economic development. 40
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